The future isn't orange for Sunny D

In the past couple of years, a curious phenomenon has been occurring in the chiller cabinets of our supermarkets. The Just Juices, smoothies and cordials have been usurped by a newcomer that's changed the face of the soft-drink brandscape. Last year, Sunny Delight stormed to third place in the UK 'pop' chart with annual sales of £160m, putting it streaks ahead of venerable brands such as Robinson's and challenging Pepsi - only £30m in front - for supremacy.

For Sunny Delight - or to use its 'street' name, Sunny D - is not a juice. Fruit derivatives - a cocktail of orange, lime, grapefruit and tangerine juices - make up only 5 per cent of its content. The rest is a riot of preservatives, flavourings and vegetable oil, plus, according to the watchdogs the Food Commission, 10-teaspoons-worth of sugar in each half-litre bottle. Sunny D, however, makes much of its 'enrichment' with beta-carotene and vitamins B and C - and therein lies a rub that could put the brakes on the brand's world domination.

Sunny D was initially marketed by its parent company, Proctor & Gamble, as a healthier alternative to the colas and Tangos. (In this, it was following an illustrious precedent; Coke itself was pushed as an 'esteemed brain tonic' on its launch a century ago). Its £7m Saatchi & Saatchi ad campaign - 'the great stuff kids go for!' - featured rosy outward-bound children watched over by complacent mums, secure in the knowledge that their offspring were vitamin-enhanced. It even supported Child Health Day in the US. 'It arrived at a time when there had been a lot of food scares, and the public were susceptible to optimistic messages,' says Tom Blackett, chairman at brand consultants Interbrand. 'The vitamin stuff gave it a white-coated credibility.'

P&G, having sold Sunny D in the US for 20 years and road-tested it in Carlisle for two years prior to its launch, wanted to ensure maximum visibility for the product, and set about wooing the supermarkets. 'Their clout ensured that it was given very high shelvage,' says an industry insider at a leading supermarket chain. 'Don't forget that P&G's main business is detergent; they know how to pile stuff high and sell it cheap.' They also employed data from loyalty-card schemes to direct-mail lower income families, offering Sunny D discounts.

However, the honeymoon period came to an abrupt end in August last year, when a report on the BBC's Watchdog urged parents to take a closer look at the stuff their kids were demanding and lapping up. The Food Commission also weighed in, accusing P&G of bandying phrases like 'California Style' and 'orange taste' to mislead punters into thinking they were being sold pure fruit juice. 'The initial trust gave way to scepticism,' says the supermarket insider. 'Mums came up to me, saying things like, "At least with Coke we know we're basically feeding our kids junk. If you looked at the ingredients of Sunny D, it sounded like a chemistry set."'

There was a certain inevitability to the subsequent rash of Sunny D scare stories-cum-playground myths: the grapefruit juice in it reacted badly with prescription hay fever medicine (false; too little to make any difference); it contains chalk (a 'fact' reported earnestly by a dentist acquaintance that's, regrettably, false); a girl turned orange after drinking it (true, her face and hands went tangerine, but only after consuming 1.5 litres in a single day); it needn't be in the chiller cabinet at all - false, insists John Bennett, marketing director at Proctor & Gamble. 'It's not a marketing con,' he says. 'It's in the cabinet to ensure that its vitamin levels are maintained.'

There's no doubt, however, that the adverse publicity recently dealt out to Sunny D has given P&G pause for thought. The more recent TV ads put less stress on health and more on gratification, and while John Bennett thinks the brand's 'core values' remain unaffected - 'it's a compromise between fizzy drinks and juices, with the vitamin content giving it that something extra' - he admits to mistakes in the way it was initially presented. 'I don't think we made it clear enough that Sunny D was a different brand of drink.'

To that end, P&G are experimenting with new Sunny D formats. Mango and orange and raspberry flavours will shortly be joined by a Five Alive-style Caribbean cocktail flavour, aimed at older teens; miniatures are also planned (to go alongside snap-boxes for Pringles, another P&G triumph), and calcium has recently been added to Sunny D in the US. Bennett says P&G are in it for the long-term, but for some it may be a case of stable doors and bolting horses. 'It doesn't matter what they put in it,' one mother told me. 'If they add vitamin C to tobacco, does that make it healthy?' 'May be it peaked too early,' says the industry insider. 'You'll see the displays getting smaller as it finds its natural level.'

Sunny D could be embattled on another front. 'It had huge success exploiting this gap in the market,' says Tom Blackett, 'so you can expect supermarkets to launch their own versions anytime soon.' Hmm - Cloudless Elation, anyone?